A Couple Questions 10 Weeks Out From Potential First Meet

Hello BBM Team,

First, thank you all for the wonderful content you put out and the good work you are doing. After years of bro-style work and dabbling in various fitness trends, I started the SSNLP in August 2018 and switched over to BBM-style programming in January 2019. Your content on training, nutrition, and pain science has truly transformed my physical life. I finished law school and took the bar exam this past summer, started work at an associate at a law firm, and my wife and I just had our second child. Motivated by all your good content and the desire to keep training hard, I have switched to 5am workouts and earlier bedtimes to fit my work schedule and avoid taking away from family time. What was I going to do, not train? Anyway, thank you!

Background statistics:

  • 30 year old male
  • 5’10", 197 lbs, 33 inch waist
  • 1rms (tested late July 2019) 335lb Squat, 225 Bench, 405 Deadlift. Current e1rms are close to those numbers or a few pounds higher.

Questions:

  1. I have cycled through 6-8 week programs (3 days/week, plus 1-2 days GPP and some sporadic martial arts training) of strength and hypertrophy for the last few months. I am currently 3 weeks into a hypertrophy block, based on a slightly modified version of the legacy 3 day gpp - hypertrophy bias. I am thinking of entering a local powerlifting competition (my first) on December 11. This would give me 10 weeks, starting next Monday, to prepare. Do you think I should finish my hypertrophy block and then spend the remaining 6 - 7 weeks on a strength/peaking block? Or should I switch next week and do 10 weeks of strength/peaking?

  2. Any recommendation on how to program these next 10 weeks? Specifically, I am wondering if switching from 3 days to 4 days would be the right call at this time. On one hand, I figure the extra volume might be good leading up to my first meet. On the other hand, I wonder if switching from 3 days to 4 would be too big of a change leading up to a meet.

Thank you in advance for any advice you have; it is much appreciated. Keep up the excellent work!

Hey Frank,

Thanks for the props and I’m pumped at the prospect of signing up for your first meet soon :slight_smile: Congrats on all the recent life PRs as well!

I think if you sign up for this meet, you should do the Strength I template for the balance of what you have left. In other words, if you have 9 weeks to go, do the last 9 weeks of the that template. However, if you waffle long enough to not sign up until about 3-4 weeks out, I’d just do one of our free peaking templates.

-Jordan

Thanks so much, Jordan. I really appreciate the advice and encouragement. And your comment about what to do if I “waffle” long enough prompted me to take action: I purchased Strength I and will start week 5 on Monday. And I will be signing up for this meet in the next couple days. Thanks for giving me the push to go for it! Now I just have to figure out this whole singlet business . . .

Oh, one more question, if you don’t mind. I know you generally prefer other conditioning methods over running for HIIT and LISS conditioning unless people are fairly trained runners. I have been running on and off for years. In my context of meet prep, would you strongly advise against running for my GPP conditioning? I work out in my basement and a treadmill is all I have for cardio equipment. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what would be best at this point. Thanks again!

I would not run for conditioning while prepping for a powerlifting meet. I’d stick to walking in your case :slight_smile: